The music and Serge Lama, it’s over. At the dawn of his 80th birthday, the artist chose to bow out by releasing a final album. This decision was not easy to make but was obvious. “I had planned a tour. After confinement, I could no longer sing, it completely broke me physically. […] Even if in my head everything is fine, I feel handicapped. I refuse that the public sees me like that“, he explains in the new issue of Paris Match. If there’s one he can’t hide, however, it’s Luana, his wife, to whom he dedicated his entire album.
This last work, Serge Lama chose to call it To like, a beautiful way to declare his love to the one he married in February 2021. At the time, however, he would never have thought of putting the ring on his finger. Not for lack of desire and commitment, but for love, paradoxically. 35 years separate the lovers, a significant gap that made the singer think: “There’s a song I wrote to my wife, Luana, that goes, ‘That’s why I’m saying goodbye to you.’ She is 44 years old and, despite the love, at one point I said to myself that I could not stay with her. I was afraid of spoiling it.”
The couple discussed, exchanged to come to the same conclusion: separation is not an option. The love was much stronger: “Finally, she didn’t want this song either. We got married last year. Everything I do is for her. This album is dedicated to him. Our love story has been going on for 20 years. I was with her even while still married.“
As a reminder, before passing in front of the mayor with Luana, Serge Lama was married to Michèle Potier, the mother of his son Frédéric. But in 2016, after more than forty-five years of happiness, his wife died suddenly at the age of 71, swept away by a stroke. A drama for the interpreter of I am sick : “Michele was everything to me. This woman was unique and irreplaceable. She was the lover, the confidante. […] She was my wife, my mother and my best friend. I had entrusted everything to him… Today, I am all the more distraught because I always thought I would leave first.“
The full interview with Serge Lama can be found in the October 13, 2022 issue of Paris Match.